laboratory

Portrait of a Scientific Glassblower

Hereโ€™s a skill I always wanted to learn. The chemistry program at my alma mater still actually includes glassblowing classes, but they are pretty perfunctory. Doing it right takes considerable practice, in my experience. And if you want to make apparatus, as I recall, you need access to an annealing oven. Etsy created this video portrait of their seller Kiva Ford, who makes both scientific and art glassware. [via Boing Boing]

Simple Hele-Shaw Flow Demo Produces Beautiful Organic Forms

Simple Hele-Shaw Flow Demo Produces Beautiful Organic Forms

Spotted in the MAKE Flickr pool, this cool vid from Jessica Rosenkrantz featuring a simple Hele-Shaw cell, which, per Wikipedia, demonstrates โ€œStokes Flow between two parallel flat plates separated by an infinitesimally small gap.โ€ Further, โ€œ[v]arious problems in fluid mechanics can be approximated to Hele-Shaw flows and thus the research of these flows is of importance.โ€

How-To: Set Up a Basement PCB Fab & Use It To Make a POV Business Card

How-To: Set Up a Basement PCB Fab & Use It To Make a POV Business Card

This Instructable from Jared Foster doesnโ€™t just show you how to make his cool persistence-of-vision business card. It takes you through the construction of a circulating etch tank, the modification of a laminating machine to make a stencil applicator, the assembly of a controller to turn a toaster into a reflow oven, and the cobbling-together of a vacuum pickup tool for SMT components. And then you get some practice using all that cool stuff making a POV business card. It even comes with obligatory American Psycho allusions.

Wellesley College Engineering

Friday afternoon, I was vising my friend Amon Millner at Olin College. After finishing up, he invited me to go with him to the nearby Wellesley College and the Engineering Studio. Not knowing quite what to expect, but always interested in seeing hands-on learning spaces, I went along for the ride. What I saw took my breath away and left me speechless. It is still a bit mind boggling to consider what this lab has, and the amazing ideas that have come from it.